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The Little Red Riding Hood of Ardmore

If you live in the Philadelphia area it’s hard to have missed the story of the young white lady from Ardmore who was found killed in her apartment recently. Why does this story remind me of Little Red Riding Hood, the European fairy tale about a young girl and a Big Bad Wolf?

When the story first broke, I felt it quite unfair that most news outlets took every opportunity to label her a former Playboy model every chance they could. Now we discover she was murdered by a black man she brought home after meeting him in Philly on a cocaine buy. Still not a good look on her part.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in a village near the forest.

Ardmore is that village near the big forest of Philadelphia.

“Remember, go straight to Grandma’s house,” her mother cautioned. “Don’t dawdle along the way and please don’t talk to strangers! The woods are dangerous.”

What mother hasn’t reminded their young daughters to be careful in those dangerous streets (the woods) and not to talk to strangers? And, most mothers will notice what their daughters are wearing and have something to say if deemed inappropriate.

Whenever she went out, the little girl wore a red riding cloak, so everyone in the village called her Little Red Riding Hood.

According to Psychology Today…

Social psychologists with an evolutionary bent are in love with the color red. Women wear red, according to this view, as a sexual signal to attract men (e.g. Elliot et al., 2012). In non-human primates, females show they’re ready to mate by displaying red on their bodies, including face, chest, or genitalia.

I don’t think it’s an accident the author put Red Riding Hood in red and based on the text the guy she met up with in Philly sent to a friend, she may have traveled into the forest of the Philly streets looking like a Playboy model…

“I just met this sexy-ass white [expletive],” he allegedly texted the tipster, according to the warrant. “I’m at her crib in Ardmore.”

Now that they’ve identified the Big Bad Wolf, it’s not hard to notice how her image in the press has changed. No longer is she a Playboy model first and foremost. She is now referred to as just a model and other publications she modeled for are mentioned. She is no longer just a Playboy Model.

Today I read she brought the guy she met in Philly home to Ardmore for sex to pay for her cocaine purchase and the guy allegedly killed her because he still wanted to get paid. What a horrible story.

Almost too late, Little Red Riding Hood realized that the person in the bed was not her Grandmother, but a hungry wolf.

Susan Brownmiller is an American feminist journalist, author, and activist best known for her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, where she mentions the connection between the Little Red Riding Hood story and rape, so I’m not crazy with my comparison here.

The focus of the story has moved from the Ardmore lady to the black guy she encountered in Philly. He definitely earned his bad boy badge but the lady is looking even more shady than before. Not only does she troll in Center City for coke, she expects to pay for it by having sex with a stranger and treats him like the Cash App.

We all can assume how the story ends. Just like in Little Red Riding Hood…

The woodsman knocked out the wolf and carried him deep into the forest where he wouldn’t bother people any longer.

The same fate awaits the Big Bad Wolf in this real life story as the Red Riding Hood of Ardmore has successfully been transformed from a bad girl Playboy model to a helpless victim of rape and murder by a Big Bad Wolf.